In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics to support the Fejér Memorial Lecture Series, or simply that you spend an hour with a pencil and paper, trying to solve something beautiful.
His 1965 doctoral thesis, On the Interplay of Markov and Bernstein Inequalities , set the stage for what would become his signature contribution to mathematics: the Fejér constants and the refinement of the classical Markov inequality. To write a Bela Fejer obituary without explaining his work would be like describing a cathedral without mentioning its stained glass. Fejér’s research revolved around a simple, beautiful question: Given a polynomial that is bounded on a given interval, how large can its derivative possibly be? bela fejer obituary
He was married once, to Erzsébet (Éva) Fejér, a linguist and translator. Theirs was a partnership of parallel solitude: she translated French poetry while he sketched inequalities. Éva predeceased him in 2015. They had no children. When asked why, Fejér reportedly replied, "I have thousands of children. They are called polynomials, and they behave better than humans." In lieu of flowers, the family requests that
This Bela Fejer obituary was verified by colleagues at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Bolyai Institute. For corrections or memories, please contact the mathematics department archive at ELTE University. Éva predeceased him in 2015
His teaching style was legendary. He never used slides or projectors. Instead, he would enter the lecture hall with a single piece of chalk, pace silently for a moment, and then begin to draw a symmetrical diagram on the blackboard. The diagrams were always perfect—circles that looked printed, polynomial graphs that arced with geometric precision.